If you’ve ever wondered what happens after an astronaut goes to the bathroom, wonder no more, as astronauts aboard the International Space Station recently shared they have been able to recycle 98% of their sweat and urine into drinkable water.
The process is called water recycling and is an essential milestone for low-orbit space missions, as they aim to provide the basic needs of astronauts without requiring a resupply mission. To eliminate the resupply missions, astronauts must regenerate their own food, air, and water, NASA shared.
The milestone was achieved thanks to the Environmental Control and Life Support System during a demonstration of the space agency’s new and improved Urine Processor Assembly. The UPA is able to recover water from urine by using vacuum distillation, NASA shared.
The ISS has shared that each crewmember consumes close to a gallon of water daily for drinking, food preparation, and hygiene.
NASA shared that 98% recovery of the water brought into space by crews has been the goal for some time now so that life in space can be more sustainable.
Christopher Brown, who is part of the team at Johnson Space Center that manages life support systems on the ISS, shared a statement on the news, noting that it is “a very important step forward in the evolution of life support systems.”
“Let’s say you launch with 100 pounds of water. You lose 2 pounds of that, and the other 98% just keeps going around and around,” Brown said. “Keeping that running is a pretty awesome achievement.”
The ECLSS contains multiple pieces of hardware to help sustain life in space, and among those parts is the Water Recovery System, which collects wastewater, and advanced dehumidifiers that collect the moisture from the astronaut’s breath and sweat.
After being collected, the water is sent to the Water Processor Assembly, which produces drinkable water.
The UPA element of the system distills urine into drinkable water, but until recently, a brine was produced that still contained some unused water. But now, a Brine Processor Assembly has been added to the UPA, giving it the ability to pull the remaining water, hitting the 98% goal.
“Before the BPA, our total water recovery was between 93 and 94% overall,” Jill Williamson, the ECLSS water subsystems manager, shared. “We have now demonstrated that we can reach [a] total water recovery of 98%, thanks to the brine processor.”
While some might now joke that astronauts are drinking their pee in space, Williamson says this isn’t the case.
“The crew is not drinking urine; they are drinking water that has been reclaimed, filtered, and cleaned such that it is cleaner than what we drink here on Earth,” Williamson said.
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